Mabinogi (Hangul:마비노기) is an online role-playing game released by South Korean Game Distributing Company Nexon, and developed by devCAT studio, one of several development teams in Nexon Inc. inspired by Celtic mythology. The Welsh word mabinogi is found in the original manuscripts of the Mabinogion. Mabinogi offers a multitude of skills to be cultivated and a generally high level of diversity among players, skills, and environments.

The game engine features handpainted textures stylized with edge detection outlining, which enhance the anime-looking characters. The game world is developed continuously, through the release of important patches (referred to as "Generations" and "Chapters") that introduce new areas to explore, additional features such as pets and new skills, and advancement of the storyline. The user interface is familiarly simple and designed in the likeness of Microsoft Windows' task bar, allowing the player to access most game panels with ease (experienced players can also make use of keyboard shortcuts, to simplify certain tasks).

Commercially, Mabinogi is built on a hybrid Value Added Services model (which varies slightly on each game localization), that allows free but limited gameplay and the subscription of paid packages, purchased through the game service shop, which unlock the full game experience. The game service is currently available in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, North America and most recently New Zealand and Australia. During the 2007 Gstar game show in Seoul, South Korea, Nexon announced they were working on an Xbox 360 version of Mabinogi.

The North American closed beta version was released by Nexon on January 30, 2008 at 2pm PST and January 30, 2008 at 5pm EST. The pre-open beta only available to fileplanet users was released on March 5, 2008. The full open beta was released on March 6, 2008 3PM PST. The North American version of Mabinogi has been officially released on March 27th, 2008.

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The player is not limited by any class other than the character's race, and is free to level up any of the different skills available. The combination of skill choices, age, items, physical constitution, and other variables such as user titles, is what makes up the character. The gameplay is largely skill-based. To learn and improve skills, Ability Points are required.

There are also various social aspects, like sitting around a campfire, playing music, having a friendly chat, sharing food, as well as making use of different facial expressions to make user interaction more colorful.

Players can set up stores to sell their items. Incidentally, items cannot be looted, as it frequently happens in other games, since any item dropped from a monster cannot, as a rule, be picked up by another player for a short time. Items can be safely traded through the trading panels.

Generation 3, in later updates, added housing areas between Tir Chonaill and Dunbarton and also between Bangor and Emain Macha. Through this housing system, players can bid for a house and pay rent for it afterwards, in order to keep it. Houses may be used as stores and players can purchase items to decorate their homes.

As in many other MMORPG's, player characters can get married in-game, by requesting this to a marriage NPC. A pet system is also available. Players may purchase Pet Cards from the game store and summon them in-game. Pets can help in combat or, in some cases, even be used as transportation, allowing the player to travel at a greater speed than on foot.

Other features worth mentioning are the friend, party and guild systems. Guild creation requires the purchase of an extended play package from the game store. Guilds can expand/level up by meeting an increasing quota of points (called Guild Points, or GP), which are earned by the guild's members by staying in-game. PvP combat is also possible in special arenas.

Achieving certain conditions will reward the character with a title. Titles, when applied, can change the character's :stats, with the potential to be beneficial or detrimental.
Some titles are unique in the server and only one character in that server can be awarded with the title, usually by breaking down a Seal Stone. There are a few titles awarded for completing an event, participating in the Closed Beta period, or completing Mainstream Quests.

In the Mabinogi world, there are three beginning towns in Generation 1, named:

Tir Chonaill (often called "Newbie Town")

Dunbarton (often called "dunby")

Bangor

Generation 2 added a new town to the world of Erinn:

Emain Macha

There is also a wide variety of other maps, such as the fields which connect the towns, dungeons and quest maps, the "Soulstream" (where Nao appears) and "the Gate".

Generation 4 added a new region, Rano, which belongs to a whole new continent, named Iria. This continent is quite large (when fully implemented, it is about three times larger than the size of the Uladh mainland, where Generations 1 to 3 took place).

Generation 5 revealed another region of Iria called Connus and introduced a new race of characters, the Desert Elves. It also added the elfen town of 'Philia'.

Generation 6 introduced yet a new kind of race, the Giants. A new area called Physis (a place eternally covered in snow) and a town called Vales were added at this point.

Generation 8 introduced another extension to the continent of Iria, Zardin, where a new mainstream quest takes place for the human characters. This area features active volcanoes and sulphur geysers, and is "not a part of Erinn," according to the game.

An upcoming patch in summer 2008 in South Korea is expected to introduce some new areas in the Uladh continent: Taltin and Tara.

Mabinogi has mainstream story campaigns which are playable only when a person is a game service subscriber. These quests have connected story lines that reveal the background story of Erinn and several important characters.

There are 3 stories in sequential order, each implemented at their corresponding Generation updates.
Generation 1: Advent of the Goddess
Generation 2: Paladin
Generation 3: Dark Knight
Generation 8: The Drake of Iria
Generations 4~7 don't have any story campaign, which is reason of complaint among part of the player base.

The game has its own internal clock (36 minutes of the real time corresponds to 1 day of the game), as day gradually turns into night (a dynamic weather system is also in place, with effects such as rain, thunder and sand storms). Each real time day of the week offers players the opportunity to take advantage of specific gameplay bonuses, such as increased skill success or lowered NPC store prices.

Weekday names used in-game reflect the Celtic mythology that the game evokes. In Mabinogi, the days of the week are represented by seasons:

On January 28, 2008, it was reported that a 16-year-old boy from Japan hacked the website of Nexon Japan and accrued 36 million yen (325,000 Dollars) worth of game points used in Mabinogi. It sparked discussions among the public about the security of an online game's billing system.

Worldwide official game sites
Official site of Mabinogi in South Korea
Official site of Mabinogi in Japan
Official site of Mabinogi in Taiwan
Official site of Mabinogi in Mainland China
Official site of Mabinogi in North America
Official site of Mabinogi Heroes in South Korea